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July 2012
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novation and R&D related to electronics and embedded
systems. The role and collaboration of ICT companies is
very significant in all such innovations.
Besides ICT being integral part of an automobile, in-
novation in ICT enables the industry to be more efficient
in designing, manufacturing, distributing and servicing
its products worldwide. OEMs are leveraging the ICT
platform to reduce the product development cycle time
with features such as target design, cost and time. The
cycle time is being crashed from six years to almost
less than 24 months now. Ford’s Virtual Reality Cave
attempts through the virtual prototype technology to
reduce the need to build physical prototypes and trim
thousands of dollars and several months from the prod-
uct development process.
The six finalist vehicles (Ford Focus, Hyundai Elantra
and Volkswagen Passat, BMW X3, Honda CR-V and
Rover Evoque) in 2012 North American Car/Truck of
the Year awards were all developed using CATIA, long
recognized as the leading design solution in the automo-
tive industry.
Sustainable mobility
An equally important focus of the auto industry global-
ly is on green cars and sustainable mobility. From hybrids
to hydrogen cells, the world’s leading OEMs are working
vigorously to increase their production of ‘green cars’.
It is also expected that increasing fuel prices will ac-
celerate introduction of plug-in hybrid and battery elec-
tric vehicles. Deloitte estimates that by 2020 electric
vehicles and other “green” cars will form a third of the
total global sales in developed markets. In 2012 alone,
the industry will witness about 15 new electric vehicle
launches in the global market. Gartner is forecasting
sales of 100,000 electric cars in the US in 2012. In all
such initiatives, ICT and contribution from the ICT in-
dustry to the auto industry will be very significant.
New business models such as car sharing and inte-
grated urban mobility as well as electric vehicles will
create new business opportunities. For example, BMW,
in partnership with a rental car company Sixt, provides
car sharing service called ‘DriveNow’, which has 500
vehicles and 9,500 subscribers as part of its service in
Berlin. Bicycle Rental is popular in Paris. Batscap is
taking this to electric car rent through ‘Autolib’, an elec-
tric car sharing scheme in Paris. The scheme intends to
deploy about 3,000 electric Bollorés Bluecars for public
use, based around 1,120 citywide parking and charging
stations. The registered member can pick up the car, say,
from the airport to the shopping mall and drop the ve-
hicle at the nearest charge station. He will be charged
for the usage. This consumer- and environment-friendly
and of course wallet-friendly scheme is getting popular
in the Western world.
The connected vehicle initiative in the industry will
further facilitate sustainable mobility. ICT plays a cru-
cial role in connected navigation, offering services like
eco driving, dynamic routing, real time traffic informa-
tion and other services. These are crucial for an effective
integrated mobility solution.
Conference structure
The CII conference was intended to deal with all the
above topics in depth, with leading speakers from ICT
and the automotive industry expressing their expert
views at the three plenary sessions.
Interestingly in the US today there is closer collabora-
tion between the East and the West. I mean Detroit and
the Silicon Valley. Here, in Chennai, I observe that we
need not to travel too far. We have the IT corridor in
OMR and the auto corridor at Oragadam. Our Indian
Silicon Valley, Bangalore, is not too far from here. I
am sure that we have an equally vibrant, if not better
eco system to accelerate innovation in the auto industry
leveraging the faster developments in ICT.
There are brighter chances of Chennai-Bangalore
soon to become the global ICT innovation hub for the
auto industry with its eco system, superior talent pool
and frugal innovation capabilities.
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technology